This isn't a bad game, but it is the third greatest disappointment of my life (right after junior prom and the truth about Santa Claus). To understand why, we must go back to a time long before anyone knew who Master Chief was, to an era when the greatest console first-person shooter was GoldenEye 007 from Rare Ltd. When EA bought the Bond license, hopes of a proper sequel to the landmark game were lost. Then Rare gave us Joanna Dark, an alternate British superspy with better curves than Bond, and who came with the same robust multiplayer we'd all grown to love. The aptly titled Perfect Dark even threw in new innovations like dual-wielded weapons, long before Halo claimed to have invented them.
When the next console generation came, many of us bought GameCubes primarily to play the next-gen Perfect Dark sequel. Then Microsoft wrapped its corporate tentacles around Rare, and oh, how the hate mail flowed from Nintendo fans. Those who survived the cataclysmic news sucked it up, bought Xboxes, and waited. For five years.
Perfect Dark Zero has finally arrived (on Xbox 360), and it feels like a game that's been in development for three different consoles over five years by a once great company that has been bought out, chopped up, and rearranged countless times. Somehow, they even forgot Joanna was British. What's left is your average futuristic shooter. And that's far from perfect.
CALL OF DUTY 2 (M) (4.5 stars)
Activision
Xbox 360
Without a doubt, the best-looking title of Xbox 360's launch lineup. With the first-person-shooter market supersaturated with WWII games, they were beginning to all look alike, but Call of Duty 2 reminds us why we love to shoot Nazis.
KAMEO: ELEMENTS OF POWER (T) (3 stars)
Microsoft Game Studios
Xbox 360
Rare's other five-year project builds on the ideas from Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie. Those games had you constantly switching to new characters with different abilities; this one gives you a shape-shifter who does that on the fly. A few of these elemental warriors are nifty, but I'd trade them all for one really cool character who doesn't have multiple personality disorder.
QUAKE 4 (M) (3.5 stars)
Activision
Xbox 360
If you thought it was impressive how close the Xbox's Doom 3 was to the PC version, prepare to be blown away (over and over again if you're playing multiplayer). Like its predecessors, Quake 4 is just a simple-minded, first-person gore-fest, but as gore-fests go, it sure is pretty.
Matthew Scott Hunter has been known to mumble, "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start" in his sleep. E-mail him at
[email protected].